The aim of the proposal is the development of a high throughput, broadband method to access real-time information about the fine details of physical and biological objects. This will be achieved by transforming evanescent electromagnetic waves, the information carriers for small scale features, to free-space propagating waves that can be collected easily by standard optical techniques. The suggested metamaterial platform will impact most fields where fine-scale diagnostics are important (materials science, condensed matter physics, biology) and will also allow the recording and retrieval of encrypted information for which specially designed metamaterials will act as a unique decryption key.